Major Tea Party Group Was Backed by Salsa Billionaire and Other Wealthy Donors, Hacked Documents Reveal

Tea Party Patriots, a major conservative organization that bills itself as one of the largest grassroots groups on the right, was in fact heavily backed by three ultra-wealthy individuals in recent years, according to internal data reviewed by The Intercept.

The largest donor was Texas billionaire Christopher Goldsbury, who made his fortune selling the salsa company Pace Foods to Campbell Soup in 1994. On September 11, 2019, Goldsbury donated $1 million to the TPP Foundation via wire transfer. According to tax documents, the TPP Foundation took in $1.2 million in revenue that year. Goldsbury had been a TPP member since 2014 and had already donated $20,000 to TPP’s three separate organizations in previous years. Goldsbury did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, activity by the group’s members appears to have waned. The Intercept found just 144,000 members marked “active” in the online data, versus claims on the TPP website of a “network of 3 million activists,” of “more than 3 million supporters,” and of “over 3 million patriots.” Data from local chapters show members are clustered in fast-growing areas like Colorado and all along the Sun Belt, from California through Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and Florida.

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